Higher education is a passport to get out of India and pursue undergraduate/graduate school abroad. It will provide opportunities to enhance educational and professional opportunities to conduct research and work in domains of interest to follow your dreams for a better life.
The landscape of global education has opened doors for students in Goa and India at large for graduate schools around the world. Today, one can apply to any university in the world if one has the motivation and determination along with good grades at the undergraduate level. Basically, there are two pathways for students to pursue undergraduate/graduate education in the USA, which I am more familiar with after working for 32 years in Higher Education. The first track is through sports scholarships into undergraduate programmes and the second option is through academic scholarships mostly into graduate school. With these opportunities, there are also challenges that these students will face related to psychological, social, and emotional stress. Many of them will be travelling internationally for the first time, leaving the comforts of their home, which can be very trying for some. An important piece of advice: Learn to cook your mother’s favourite dishes, it will serve you well in this part of the world!
If you are an elite athlete in soccer, track and field, or any other National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sport, you could be recruited by high-performing educational institutions that have Division-I conference offerings of various sports. Majority of the American universities recruit elite athletes to their schools/teams to strengthen their chances of winning the national championship, which is a great privilege. In recent years, the USA has been recruiting elite Indian student-athletes (athletics) who have made a considerable mark at NCAA Track and Field meets.
In early 1970, Mohinder Singh Gill who was the premier triple jumper of India was one of the first student-athlete that represented California Polytechnic State University in California in triple jump and won the NCAA Division-I championship.
In the process, these institutions of higher learning make millions of dollars through endorsements and TV revenues. Millions of dollars are used to grant student-athletes’ scholarships to enrol in an educational programme (any major) and represent the institution in high-level NCAA sports competitions.
The same holds true for students with academic excellence to pursue Higher Education abroad. There are many types of offered scholarships in the form of graduate assistantship, teaching assistantship and fellowships to pursue a degree. These students assist full-time professors in teaching assignments and conduct laboratory experiences for the regular students in the programme study areas.
More scholarships are available in science and engineering fields where the scholarship amount is normally higher as compared to the degrees in social sciences. Graduate students get total tuition paid for (which can be a substantial dollar amount) and additionally get a bimonthly/monthly stipend ranging from $700 to $2,500 approximately (even more in prestigious institutions of higher learning), depending on the major.
Education in America is very expensive as compared to the rest of the world. My suggestion is to complete an undergraduate degree in Goa/India and then apply for graduate school in the USA. One must recognise that these students must have excellent grades to get into graduate school. That is how I pursued my doctoral degree at Pittsburgh University, PA, and the rest is history.
[The writer presently based in Ohio-US has won awards in multiple sports in his youth and served in Higher Education as a faculty member, administrator and innovator in sports in the US for 32 years]
